The Guitar Player's Resource
Hello everyone! I am here on Guitar Nine with a new technical exercise.
The common pentatonic boxes are in the hands of every guitarist, but often, many people ask me exercises using pentatonic scales in different shapes combinations. Even if I know that there are many lessons about ways to use the pentatonics, a different way to play them could be always a nice surprise. Guitarists like Joey Tafolla, Eric Johnson, Paul Gilbert and many others use interesting mixed patterns, so I'm going to explain here an example of how simple penta- positions can be used.
The three examples below are in the key of D major, with the famous "blue note" added.
A good exercise would be playing them using both alternate picking and legato -- even tapping. Every example changes the beat accent, and in the last one we have also some string skipping passages.
Playing them clean is the first step, as always, it is important to start slowly, without using your distortion pedal, in order to hear every single note you play.
The metronome time at 150 is just symbolic, for any kind of questions, or for buying my new instrumental Attitude CD, entitled "Overflowing" (available through Guitar Nine), you can contact me through my site www.salvatorevecchio.too.it. Ciao!
Salvatore Vecchio is an Italian guitarist and columnist for guitar magazines. He is currently playing with two bands, Ivory and Attitude.
His debut instrumental rock/fusion CD is "The Warm LIght Of Night".
